Like this:

I’m currently on Equine Medicine/Surgery rotation right now… I already did 2 weeks of medicine and I’m now on my last week of surgery.  I’ve had this one patient that came in over a week ago for a full body scan to figure out her lameness and sore back issues.  She’s a 3 year old Thoroughbred race horse and I totally fell in love with her.  She’s a Giacomo daughter and won her early races and placed well in some stakes races before she started having problems.

It was kind of like owning a horse again… I had to do physical exams and get vital parameters (temperature, pulse and respiratory rates, etc.) on her twice a day, administer medications, groom her, make sure she had clean water and that she was comfortable.  We ended up doing a TON of diagnostic work on her to find that she had some “chips” that we ended up removing via arthroscopy.

I thought she was going to be crazy and wired because she was coming straight off the track.  According to her records, she raced last earlier this year then we assume she was given some time off then re-worked because there’s a recorded workout.  Her times must not have been up to par because she came to us shortly thereafter.  Don’t get me wrong… she was still a young Thoroughbred mare, but she was SO sweet and I completely fell in love with her.  I was able to do my physical exams and get her vitals measured while she hung out eating hay.  I hand-walked her and hand-grazed her twice a day and was able to cold-hose her back leg while she grazed.  She did have some spooky moments but nothing that we didn’t both quickly recover from… and like I said, she was still a young racehorse so all that was EXPECTED.  What was unexpected was that she was SO agreeable to handle and she really enjoyed all the fussing I did with her; I groomed her meticulously every day and bathed her before surgery and she was awesome for all of it… it really made me change my perception of mares.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad when I had a patient discharged from the hospital yet… not even my small animal patients, which kind of has me a little perplexed.  I was seriously depressed when she left today.  We joke saying that I was a second away from running off into the sunset with her!  Now, I don’t have anymore horse patients unless I get called in for an emergency colic while I’m on-call…

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